What's the best way to handle armor's protective properties?

Who cares. Post cool armor art and talk armor.

>studded leather
disgusting

?

Leather armor in general is a whole other topic on its own, but studded leather just disappoints me on another level.
If it's actually brigandine but just called studded leather (because it can be misinterpreted that way), that's fine, but if it's literally floppy leather with metal studs in it, it does absolutely jack shit for protection.

absolutely haram.
disgusting.
>chainshirt
>chainmail
>studded leather
>half plate

lmao

While I think Open Legend gets pretty clumsy once a campaign begins hitting strides, I really love how it handles defenses: everything's damage resistance, minimum 3 damage, if you exceed their defense by enough you get to add a secondary effect based on the type of attack you're making alongside the damage.

Damage reduction

are they that penetrative?

the hole over the heart was caused by no gf 2 hug&fug

I'm playing with the idea of having armor lower the result on a critical effects table.

If we are talking d20 check Fantasycraft or Symbaroum (for a lighter alternative)

EVerything else GURPS

+ac
+more ac vs stabbing and slashing
some sort of ailment caused when hit with excessive bludgeoning damage.
similar ailment when it with even more excessive slashing/piercing that beats ac by X amount.

AC and/or DR in combat heavy systems. DR in rules light. Armor die or dice pool in rest.

Best way I've seen is the armor save style from Warhammer, where armor is just one component of a multi-piece defense.

Damage Reduction makes the most sense for any system in my opinion.

>Easily shows whether you avoided the blow entirely or if your armour saved you
>Different damage types can alter the result for the DR (Blunt/Cutting/Elemental)
>Can be static armour DR or rolled DR value
>Can easily represent different points on the body which may have different armour values
>Isn't all or nothing damage like AC or some armour HP systems

I basically use this for my homebrew plus a Damage Reduction minus Armor Penetration while your armor is still working.
I'd like to say it works fairly well, but I have to group so I'll likely never get to try it

Armor Class like in D&D. Works perfectly well, and keeps combat fast and simple.

Feels good not to be a contrarian hipster retard.

See, the problem is that different armours behave in wildly different manners. Gambeson and leathers are highly protective against blunt trauma, but are highly vulnerable to slashes. Plate is highly protective versus slashing attacks, but crumples to focused trauma at a weak point. Brigandine and full plate balance the two, but at the cost of brigandine not being as specialised as either, and full plate is insanely expensive and hot and heavy to wear. Mail is generally protective against slashing and blunt, but the rings can be easily broken with specialised weapons. Lamellar is insanely resistive to everything, but is stupidly heavy and very difficult to work into useable pieces.

I'd generally do it as flat damage reduction + AC to beat. Unbacked plate would have 0 damage reduction but a high ac to beat, gambeson could have high damage reduction but low AC, mail and brigandine would have average both. Slashing weapons would have high damage but low AC pen, striking weapons would have high AC pen but lower damage, specialised anti-armour like estocs could have a to-hit penalty, but huge AC pen and decent damage.

Don't you think it's a problem that they make multiple small attacks worse than one powerful attack?

I play systems with targeting (such as inbetween gaps of armour, so it's harder) and blunt damage headshot stun rules so the more chances to bypass the armour the better

DR. i.e What are actually does. End of Story.

That picture is in no way representative of GURPS and its autism

Studded Armor

Studded leather and cloth armor – while common in
fantasy – never actually existed. Adding studs or rivets
doesn’t enhance DR. It might even reduce DR, given that
blows are less likely to be deflected! Historically, studs were
used for decoration, as rivets to join together sections of
fabric, and to attach metal plates for reinforcement. It’s
easy to mistake a coat of plates or brigandine for studded
armor, though, since the metal plates are concealed under
the material and only the rivets are visible.
However, studding could be added to a glove or an
elbow to increase damage from unarmed attacks. This
gives +1 to damage when striking with that body part. CF
is +1. Weight is +20%.

i like how someone had this expensive, ornate-as-fuck armour and got fucking shot in the chest.

guess you can't buy luck.

Armor decreases the chance to take damage. So AC.

Padded armor did exist thou...
And it was better then leather..

So your saying armor is an all or nothing?

Damage Threshold.

No fucking other way should be allowed.

I guess Battle Brothers did it in a sort of original way if you don't want DT to be tied directly to armor. But for the most part, if you wear plate armor, you should be basically invincible to anything other than carefully aimed critical hits / stabs and hammer type weapons.

No crossbow or bow can get through that for sure.

well, it brings a lot of fresh air into weapon balancing. rather than to just have the DPT count and big vs small weapons being a zero-sum game, you have to take into consideration if you are going for hitting at least 1 out of 4 attacks or if you want to make a powerful all-or-nothing shot.
Flat DR systems also work best if you consider mechanics that can help bypassing powerful damage resistances.

And padded cloth exists in GURPS aswell and is pretty sweet for the price/weight

youtube.com/watch?v=CULmGfvYlso

This Nigga doesn't know about cloth armor

Why wouldn't I know of padded cloth?

You said it didn't actually exist, wen it really did...

My point was about the status studded leather being acknowledged by GURPS and that said picture had nothing to do with GURPS

Alright, to make everything clear, what I wrote about studded leather and cloth armor is a direct copy paste from a GURPS book. It's about studded cloth and studded leather. Cloth armor is a completely viable armor material in GURPS

>what's the best way to handle armor's protective properties?

Make everyone magic-users and don't bother with it. Nobody wants to play RPGs to be boring mundane characters, so as usual, let magic rule the day and don't bother with armor at all.

Your magic users don't use armor?

>Gambeson
>Linothorax
Kys.

>didn't read
Kys.

I'm not a native English speaker, but what's up with the reading comprehension today? The text is about studded cloth armor and studded leather. I did not write said text. It just points out GURPS take on studded armor of cloth or leather often found in fantasy. It never states that cloth armor did not e exist. In fact, the chapter or two before this one handles cloth armor.

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